


the black lake

by alcibiades



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Depression, M/M, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Recovery, Suicidal Thoughts, Wakanda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-26
Updated: 2017-04-26
Packaged: 2018-10-24 02:29:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10732278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alcibiades/pseuds/alcibiades
Summary: It all ran together. Maybe it had been running together for a long time. He kind of lost track of it after a while; he had a little tablet in his room that would show him a calendar, some news, the weather. He didn't even look at the calendar, though. Calendars were for people who had something to expect, some event in their future to look forward to. Either he'd forgotten what that was like, or he'd never known in the first place.There had been a moment, in the water with Steve -- the first time or the second, he wasn't sure -- where his wet gear and Steve's dead weight had dragged them both down. They had rested together in the swirling silt at the bottom of the river, and Bucky had looked up through the water and the falling debris and seen the hazy light of the sky shining through.It had been strange. Everything happening around them, but this moment of silence and stillness. Sometimes the feeling Bucky had now reminded him of that.





	the black lake

THE BLACK LAKE

He didn't know how to explain it to Steve.

Well, no: He didn't know how to explain it to anyone, even himself, and Steve least of all. It seemed to be inexplicable. The sort of thing that nobody had come up with the words for. You might call it unfathomable, if you were so inclined.

When he woke up (another misexplanation; coming out of cryo wasn't like waking up, because when he slept, he dreamt, and when he really woke up, he remembered those dreams, and the day before) they gave him a small bare room. It was clean and comfortable, although very white and antiseptic. Clearly it was some kind of hospital room. Either that, or it was a prison cell trying very hard not to look like a prison cell. It didn't matter; the result was the same.

They fed him, frequently enough that it was obvious they knew the nutritional requirements of a serum-enhanced body were. It was mostly bland food, for which he was grateful. It always took time for his body to re-acclimate after the shock of cryo, and besides that, his diet during the time he'd been with Hydra hadn't been particularly varied. Those first few months after the Potomac, he'd eaten a lot of oatmeal. Even later, in Bucharest, he'd developed a tendency to quell the sour feeling in his stomach with a thick bowl of porridge every morning.

Nobody was nice to him, but nobody was cruel, either. They treated him with a sort of perfect neutrality that he privately imagined was better than he deserved. He was, after all, wanted -- and damaged, practically useless. A broken toy soldier.

+++

"You lied to me," Steve said.

"What?" Bucky asked, looking over at him, not taking his hand out of his pocket. They were walking through one of the exquisitely-maintained gardens on the Wakandan palace campus. It was almost oppressively green after the white of Bucky's room. There were huge red-pink flowers blooming, like spots of blood splattered among the foliage. Their stamens waved in the slight breeze, motes of pollen floating off into the sky.

"In Bucharest," Steve said. He looked tired; lines under his eyes and faintly at the corners of his mouth. "When you said you didn't remember me."

Bucky didn't say anything. He looked down at his wrist sticking out of his pocket. It was hot and humid. The air made him itch all over, but Steve had suggested they go for a walk, so he didn't want to complain.

"You wanted to protect me," Steve said. "That was it, wasn't it? You thought you could push me away and keep me from getting involved."

"That would have been awful stupid of me," Bucky said. "If I knew who I was dealing with at all."

"Yeah," Steve said. Bucky glanced over at him, and the corner of his mouth had ticked up slightly.

"Still," Bucky said. "I had to try."

+++

Steve had to leave again. He didn't tell Bucky where he was going, and that was probably for the best. Plausible deniability. It grated, though.

They had him in the lab sometimes. They messed with his arm, or hooked him up to what he faintly recognized as an EEG machine and played a series of images for him on a large transparent screen.

For anyone else it probably would have been agonizingly boring. But Bucky had gotten good at switching off whatever higher functions allowed a human being to become bored; he was compliant, cooperative, placid. Some of the stuff they did to his arm, digging around in decades-old wiring that had been repaired a dozen times, was painful. He was pretty sure. If it was pain, though, it was irrelevant in the same way that everything else seemed to be.

It all ran together. Maybe it had been running together for a long time. He kind of lost track of it after a while; he had a little tablet in his room that would show him a calendar, some news, the weather. He didn't even look at the calendar, though. Calendars were for people who had something to expect, some event in their future to look forward to. Either he'd forgotten what that was like, or he'd never known in the first place.

There had been a moment, in the water with Steve -- the first time or the second, he wasn't sure -- where his wet gear and Steve's dead weight had dragged them both down. They had rested together in the swirling silt at the bottom of the river, and Bucky had looked up through the water and the falling debris and seen the hazy light of the sky shining through.

It had been strange. Everything happening around them, but this moment of silence and stillness. Sometimes the feeling Bucky had now reminded him of that.

There was a fundamental difference, though: Looking up at the sky, Bucky had known then that he could surface. Now, he wasn't sure.

+++

They gave him a new left arm. It fit right up against the filed-down remains of the old one, with a thin cover -- something like silicone, but thinner and more flexible -- that rolled up over his shoulder and adjusted to the color of his skin when pressed down. The arm looked just like a real human arm. In fact, it looked just like Bucky's real left arm had, although he had no idea how they could have known how his arm looked.

He couldn't figure out how to tell them he didn't want it. So he didn't say anything.

It weighed less than the old one had, but more than no arm at all, so they advised that he wear it as much as possible in order to adjust. Steve was back from wherever he had been, and Bucky wore it out to meet him in the big courtyard garden with the obsidian fountain.

Steve was sitting on the edge of the fountain facing away when Bucky came out. He stood up and walked around, and when he saw Bucky's arm his face immediately froze, his expression becoming immediately immobile in a way Bucky knew Captain America had plenty of practice with during his bond-selling days.

"I'm going to take it off," Bucky said. "It'll be five minutes, I'll come right back."

Steve reached out and grabbed Bucky's wrist, staring down at his fingers where they closed around the false flesh. "Don't," he said. "Not because of me--"

The arm was still a lot stronger than Bucky's real arm had been. He broke the grip. "I don't like it either, Steve," he said, low. Steve's face changed again: his eyes got very big, and there were these two spots of color that came up right on the points of his cheekbones.

Bucky turned away. He could hardly stand to look at Steve for long when he looked that sad.

+++

They gave him a different arm. He wasn't sure if Steve had said something, or if they'd picked up Steve's discomfort on any one of the multitude of surveillance cameras, or if maybe they'd just cottoned on to the fact that Bucky didn't wear it whenever it was feasible.

Maybe it was the same arm, actually, just without the skin-covering. It worked better than the old arm, and it looked sleeker. The plates glided silently rather than resettling. None of the gears ground together, no whirring or mechanical sounds at all. It was polished to a high chrome finish that made for an uncanny joining with the slightly duller metal remains of his shoulder.

Nobody asked him if he liked it. That was fine with him; he didn't like it, and he didn't dislike it, either. He couldn't remember the last time he'd liked something. Maybe that stupid fucking car Steve had gotten in Berlin. That thing had been awful, and only Steve would have ever thought it subtle or appropriate.

He was getting used to the arm again. Before, he hadn't worn it enough for it to give him any trouble. Now he imagined his synapses were probably figuring out all the new connections. Sometimes it just hurt for no reason at all. The old one had hurt too, almost constantly, but that pain had become familiar. This was fresh. He wasn't acclimated yet.

Sometimes he couldn't sleep, so he'd go through and read everything on his tablet's news apps. He wasn't dumb enough to think it wasn't a carefully filtered selection of news, but at least there was enough of it to take up his time.

It updated in real-time, and his feed refreshed with a video link at the top of it. When he clicked it, it opened to what must be a congressional hearing. A sweet-faced woman with red hair and freckles across the bridge of her nose sat in front of the microphone, wearing a black dress. "Throughout my career, I've always been a proponent of accountability," she said, her voice clear and confident. "I've seen firsthand -- and I do mean firsthand -- the dangers of recklessness, irresponsibility, and lack of oversight. But what we're talking about isn't accountability, because accountability works both ways. If the Avengers are to be accountable to us, to the American people, to the government, then we must be accountable to them, too."

There was some sparse applause, and she paused, waiting for it to die down before she continued. "I can think of nothing more shameful than to take these people who have risked their lives to save this country -- to save the world -- on more than one occasion, demanding nothing in return, and brand them as criminals because they refuse to bow to a needlessly draconian law. I've heard plenty of criticism for speaking out about this -- that I need to be objective. That I shouldn't make it personal."

She steepled her hands in front of herself. "But for me, as for many of you -- as for thousands of people affected directly by the actions of the Avengers, it is personal. I know these people. I know Steve Rogers. I know that he lost everything he held dear and that he continued to fight to protect not just Americans, but people around the world. And I know that the man this council would like to put on trial, to make a whipping boy of, is not a hardened war criminal -- but rather the longest-serving known prisoner of war. A victim coerced, tortured, and brainwashed into performing actions against his own will."

She was talking about Bucky. He turned the tablet off before she could say another word, set it on the table next to his bed, and rolled onto his side. It was nearly morning again.

+++

It wasn't that he wished he was dead. It was just that sometimes it seemed like it would be much more convenient for everyone, himself included, if he didn't exist.

+++

There were five transparent screens today, taking up his entire field of vision, including his periphery. Three of them showed a still image of a pristine mountain lake. The other two showed a silent movie of a steam train in black and white.

It hadn't changed in a while. Sometimes the images cycled rapidly. Sometimes they stayed for a long time. Bucky hadn't worked out what the pattern was, and he doubted he could. It was probably way over his head.

He felt someone come into the room and stand watching him, and when he turned his head, he could see that it was T'Challa. _King_ T'Challa. He wore an exquisitely tailored grey suit and a deep midnight-black silk tie. There was a tie pin in it: A small silver panther head, its eyes glittering emeralds.

They regarded each other for a few moments. T'Challa stood with his arms folded and his feet set shoulder width apart. His expression was neutral, but his stance was wary.

"I'm sorry about your father," Bucky said eventually.

"His death was not your fault," T'Challa answered.

"I know," Bucky said. "But I'm sorry about it anyway."

T'Challa nodded, once. His stance relaxed a little, some of the tension going out of his shoulders. "Your sympathies are appreciated," he said. "Though there is no need for apology: I think you suffer far more than I have."

Bucky looked down at his hands in his lap. "I'm okay.”

T'Challa stepped closer. One of his hands landed on Bucky's shoulder, gently, though there was also a strange reminder of strength in it. "You are welcome here," he said. "You may stay as long as you need, and come and go as you please. Your life is your own."

It was a ridiculous statement, Bucky thought. Nobody's life belonged to them alone, and certainly not Bucky's. But it sounded like T'Challa meant it and believed it, and Bucky appreciated the kindness, even if he didn't feel like he deserved it. "Thank you," he said.

T'Challa's hand on his shoulder stayed for a moment, and then T’Challa turned and went back toward the door. "I will leave you to your work," he said. "They tell me you work hard, without complaint. Please take time to rest, if you need it."

He went out the door of the lab before Bucky could say anything, and truthfully Bucky wouldn't have known what to say anyway, given the chance. Part of him didn't know how you could possibly call what he was doing -- sitting and staring at screens for hours on end, wandering around the gardens -- work. And another part of him thought -- he'd been asleep for so long anyway. What good was it gonna do now, to rest?

+++

"No," Steve said tightly. "No way. It's a bad idea."

The scientists all glanced around at each other. None of them said anything, and in the face of Steve, who cut an imposing figure standing with his arms folded and his expression like a storm cloud, Bucky couldn't blame them. "Steve," Bucky said.

"Bucky -- I'm not letting anyone put _electrodes_ in your brain!" Steve said. "That's -- that's awful, it's--"

"It's an experimental therapy used to control epilepsy," Bucky said. "I know it sounds bad, but it might be the best shot I have."

"The electrical current would be at a very low level, sir," said the lead scientist, the one Bucky saw the most, a grandmotherly woman with long grey braids. "There is little danger of any permanent harm to the brain matter."

"So -- what happens when you're on a mission and someone says one of the trigger words?" Steve demanded. "You get shocked and you pass out? Don't you think that's just putting yourself in more danger?"

"Maybe," Bucky said. "But it's my brain, and it's putting anyone else I might be around in a lot less danger than if somebody activates me and sets me loose." He paused. "Besides, you see me going on a lot of missions lately?"

"No, but I might--" Steve started. Bucky had a feeling he'd been about to say 'I might need you,' but he cut himself off before he could finish.

"If I may, sir," said Dr. Abo, "we have worked hard to isolate the areas of the brain associated with the specific conditioning. Combined with the accelerated healing factor, there is very little chance of compromising either function or structure of the brain. The truth is: the biggest danger is that it may not work."

Steve looked between Dr. Abo and Bucky. "You're going to let them do this," he said to Bucky, his inflection somewhere between question and statement.

Bucky shrugged. There wasn't a lot of choice in the matter, as far as he saw it. He'd been through a lot worse, for less.

"Fine," Steve said. "Fine, it's -- it's your brain." He turned away, starting for the door, and then abruptly turned back. It seemed like he had something else to say, but then he just shook his head, turned again, and left.

+++

The surgery went fine. He woke up hazy, groggy, and with a profound headache, but it was the kind of feeling he had context for -- something he'd felt before. Probably the worst part of it was the patch of hair they'd shaved just behind his ear; he hadn't cut his hair, and it was still long, past his shoulders now. When he pulled it back, the bare patch looked tremendously awkward.

Steve had gone again. It was funny, he'd been in the habit of just leaving, or not showing up where or when he was expected, even before the war. and it seemed he'd kept that habit. And for all the ways he tiptoed around Bucky carefully, this wasn't one of them. He just came and went as he pleased, as he always had.

Part of it, Bucky figured, was that Steve was afraid. If something went wrong, he would have blamed himself for not talking Bucky out of it.Steve had never known how to deal with his own vulnerability, let alone anybody else's. He'd always been trying so hard not to show any weakness. He'd hated being coddled when he was sick, and hadn't known what to do when his mother was ill. It had been Bucky who had been around, sponging sweat off her face and making chicken broth to keep her hydrated, while Steve hovered nervously in the corner of the room.

Bucky didn't blame him, nor begrudge it; Bucky'd had a lot of experience taking care of other people, what with his sisters, and Steve. When somebody was upset, there wasn't any use in trying to force them to do something that didn't come naturally to them. It wasn't that Steve didn't care, he knew that. It was that Steve cared too much.

His speech was a little slurred for a few days, and he was a bit unsteady on his feet. The small string of sutures behind his ear healed quickly. The doctors brought out the screens again, had him watch the images, which he'd seen so many times now that he'd started to detect a pattern.

Steve reappeared after about a month, as abruptly as he'd gone. He didn't come to see Bucky, and it was only by virtue of seeing Steve through one of the windows overlooking the gardens, talking to T'Challa, that Bucky knew he was there at all.

He'd thought himself incapable of feeling really hurt by anything, but it felt like a punch to the gut. That same feeling of momentary disorientation, almost like nausea. He reeled himself back in, though, and told himself it made sense. Steve had lived without him for a long time now. He couldn't expect to just come back into Steve's life and have the same space opened up for him that had been there before.

He walked down the hallway back to his room, went inside, and lay down on his side, staring at the blank wall. Sometimes he thought it would be better if he could let it out. That maybe the vacuum inside would ease if he could puncture it somehow, by crying, or screaming, or throwing up. But he never did. The feeling of lying there, hoping to feel something strong enough to pierce through that veil, was maybe the worst of all.

It wasn't sadness, was the thing. It was just unhappiness.

+++

"How are you?" asked Steve.

Bucky looked up at him, standing silhouetted in the doorway. It was brighter out in the hallway, and Steve's features were obscured by the backlighting so that Bucky couldn't quite see his expression. "I'm fine," said Bucky. "The surgery went fine."

Steve stepped in, hesitated, came over and sat next to Bucky on the bed. He was quiet for a minute, his expression cycling through a series of incrementally downturned mouths and furrowed brows. "I was here," he said. "About a month after."

"I know," Bucky said. Steve looked at him, blinking. "I saw you, out talking to the king."

Steve looked away again, running a hand through his hair and shaking his head. "I should have come and seen you," he said. "I wasn't here for very long, I -- it was wrong that I didn't come see you."

Bucky frowned. "I'm not your -- you don't have to do that, you know." His hands had landed on his knees and it took more concentration than it should have no to pick at the seams of his pants. "It's fine. You have things to do. You don't have to come see me every time."

"No," Steve said. "I should have come to see you, I just -- I don't know why I didn't. I don't know."

"Well, it's fine," Bucky said. "The hair's growing back and everything." He lifted his hair and showed Steve, and Steve awkwardly reached over and ran his fingers through the ends of the hank of lifted hair, as if to detangle it.

"They've been testing it." Steve's voice had gone very quiet. "T'Challa said."

"Yeah. They use an incomplete sequence of the trigger words, and I think they're meaning to build up to the full thing once they know I'm not gonna blow my top." Bucky let his hair back down, and Steve's hand dropped back into his lap.

"Is," Steve said. "Does it hurt?"

Bucky shrugged.

"What's it like?" Steve asked.

"It's not that bad," Bucky said. "I sort of passed out the first few times, but now it's more like -- I just lose my train of thought. I don't know if I'd say it really hurts; there's no nerve endings in there, you know. It's kind of like seeing a really bright light. A shock more than anything."

Steve nodded, though he was still frowning. "Okay," he said. "Okay, I'm glad to hear that."

"I thought you'd be more interested in whether or not it _works_ ," said Bucky.

Steve gave a rueful little chuckle. "Does it?"

"Seems to," said Bucky. "So far."

Steve heaved out a long, slow breath, his shoulders rising and falling. "Well, that's good," he said. "That's good. That was the point, wasn't it?"

"Yeah," Bucky said. "That was the point."

+++

He was back in the lab again, staring at the screens. That same image of trains; he couldn't seem to get rid of them, a harbinger of his past constantly haunting him. Most sinister, perhaps, was the fact that it was by far not the most terrifying memory association he could conjure up.

A woman's voice, so devoid of emotion Bucky could only assume it was some kind of computer program, intoned a word. He braced for it, and felt the sharpness as everything momentarily went white behind his eyes. It was funny; he could never hear the words themselves, and never had been able to. It was like they'd been redacted from his brain. He knew what they were, but couldn't comprehend them.

He'd gotten used to the feeling of having the electrodes activated, and had become better at preparing for it. He hadn't passed out since the beginning, and now he could stay standing and even keep his eyes open. There was still a full-body twitch that ran through him neck-down, but he had a feeling in time he'd master that too.

The trains again, on the screen. Soundless as they raced around the track, but he imagined he could hear it anyway: metal grinding on metal, cold wind whistling through the mountains.

He wondered what had happened to that little red book. He had a feeling he should know, but many details of that final confrontation with Stark and Zemo were indistinct. Why was it that the things he wished he could forget were so sharp? Why could he remember so clearly what it felt like to close the fingers of his left hand around a frightened man's throat and squeeze, but the important things, like what it felt like to hug Steve when he was still small and thin, or what had happened to that book, were like out-of-focus film frames.

If he had that book, he'd burn it to ash. If they gave it to him -- and they never would, he knew, they'd want to keep it, copy it, study it, and eventually someone would try to use those techniques again -- he'd take it up to the top of a mountain and lay it down on bare rock, douse it in gasoline, and light it on fire. And he'd watch it burn until the only thing left blew away in the wind.

It was one of the only thoughts that brought him any sense of comfort. But he knew it was just a fantasy.

+++

"Can I say something?" Steve asked.

Bucky clawed his hair back and tilted his head so he could look up at Steve, squinting against the sun. "Anybody ever been able to stop you when you wanted to?"

Steve didn't laugh, just frowned severely and ran his hand over his hair. "When I come and visit," he said, "You never ask me about what's going on out there."

Bucky shrugged, exhaling. "It doesn't matter," he said.

"What do you mean?" Steve asked.

"I got you into this," Bucky said. "And I can't change anything. What good's knowing going to do?"

He looked away from Steve, out toward the mountains in the distance where they stood barely visible through the heat haze. Steve was quiet, and when the silence stretched into an awkward length, Bucky looked back at him. He looked almost -- shocked.

"What?" Bucky said.

"Is that really how you feel?" Steve asked.

Over the years, Bucky'd had plenty of reasons for lying to Steve, and more still for omitting the truth. There were points when he was ashamed to say he'd done it out of convenience. It could be exhausting being with Steve -- with Steve, everything had to have a reason, and moreso, the _right_ reason, simplicity or practicality be damned.

Now, though, it was just the opposite. He was so tired, deep down in a way he'd never been tired before. He didn't have it in him to do anything but tell the truth.

"Why would I lie to you about that?" he said. His hair slipped out from behind his ear, fell back into his face again. He didn't move it.

"I don't know," said Steve.

+++

Bucky found out Steve was back while he was walking down the hall from the labs back to his room. He looked up, across the courtyard, where you could see clear through to another windowed hallway, and there they were: Wilson, Romanoff, Barton, Lang, Maximoff, and, of course, Steve.

They were all standing in a group, talking. Steve had a familiar posture: arms folded, feet shoulder-width apart. Bucky wondered if someone had taught him during his performing days that that was how a leader ought to stand. The effect was convincing, anyway.

He stood there for a minute and just watched. There was no way for him to tell what they were talking about, but he wasn't really very interested in that. Eventually, Maximoff turned around and saw him, brushing the long wavy curtain of nut-brown hair away from her face. She looked surprised, almost stricken, and her hand came up to point. She said something, and they all turned to stare at him.

He felt transfixed. A bug, pinned to a board. They all just looked at him, until Steve said something short and succinct, and then all of them turned away again, except Maximoff. Her eyes were so big. Bucky was thankful when Romanoff put a hand on her shoulder and gently pulled her back toward the group.

The spell was broken and Bucky could move again. He started down the hallway, ignoring the urge to run. He didn't need to hide from them. He had no reason to be afraid.

Once he was in his room, he was paralyzed again. He sat on his bed, thinking to himself -- what was wrong with him, that he couldn't stand to have them looking at him even for a minute and a half? It wasn't even like they'd looked angry, or accusative. Maximoff had looked, more than anything, sad. But that was bad enough too -- he didn't need anyone pitying him. He didn't need it, and he certainly didn't want it.

Someone brought him a tray of food, checked his pulse and his blood pressure. He ate the food and set the tray aside on the bedside table. After fifteen minutes or so, the door opened again, and he looked up, expecting they'd come back to take the tray away. But it wasn't one of the Wakandans; it was Steve.

"Hi," Steve said. He came over and sat down on the bed next to Bucky.

"Hi," said Bucky. "You brought friends."

"Yeah," Steve said. "I wasn't -- I wasn't going to bring them all here, I didn't want to put T'Challa under that kind of pressure, but it got too dangerous for them out there. I know Natasha and Clint and Sam can take care of themselves, but Wanda and Scott -- this isn't their life. And anyway, they were following me. I owe it to them."

"I think they'd say it was their choice to follow you," Bucky said.

"Maybe," Steve allowed. He twisted his hands together, looking like he wanted to say something else. He didn't say anything though, and after an uncomfortable silence, looked away, as if there was something other than a blank wall to stare at.

Bucky knew what this was; sometimes Steve wanted someone to ask him, so he wouldn't have to handle the pressure of deciding to say it himself. It was kind of stupid, considering that Steve was at other times the king of sudden pronouncements. "What, Steve?"

The sudden flash of relief that crossed Steve's face was undeniable, before he schooled his expression into something more neutral. "I missed you," he said. "I really miss having you out there."

"Yeah," Bucky said. "I'm glad you're back."

Steve leaned over. His forehead collided with Bucky's for a moment, and then they came to rest, face to face. Steve smelled like toothpaste. It made Bucky smile before he could stop himself, maybe the first time he'd genuinely felt like smiling in a while.

"What?" said Steve.

"Nothing," Bucky said. "Just -- did you brush your teeth before coming to visit me?"

"I had -- lunch had a lot of garlic," Steve said. "I didn't want to bombard you with that."

"That's very kind of you," Bucky said. "What a gentleman, so considerate of my delicate sensibilities. You remember that time you puked in the alley outside Angelo's, and you'd had a whole bowl of clam chowder and about half your weight in whiskey? Because I remember that, you know. I remember how I was practically carrying you home, and you kept breathing right in my face."

"Exactly," Steve said. "See, I'm just trying to make up for past offenses."

"There's no hope of that," Bucky said. "But it's very sweet that you try."

Steve smiled slightly and looked away again. He was quiet, and Bucky cleared his throat before it could drift back into being uncomfortable. "Is Wanda okay?"

"What?" Steve said. "Oh. She's fine, yeah. They were just surprised -- I didn't really tell any of them that you were awake, except Sam. Natasha figured it out, but the others -- she was just surprised."

"Ah," said Bucky, thinking, _I shouldn't be awake, I shouldn't be here._

"She wanted to come and see you," Steve said. "I told her I'd ask you. Is that okay with you? Do you want to see her?"

Bucky blinked, thinking of Maximoff's big, sad eyes looking at him from across the courtyard. "I don't -- I don't know if I'm ready for that yet," he said, and immediately regretted it, thinking of Maximoff's disappointment, her pretty young face falling when Steve told her.

Steve seemed to sense something was wrong; maybe Bucky had let it show in his expression. "Hey, it's all right," he said, putting his hand back on Bucky's shoulder. The pressure of his fingers was strangely comforting. "It's okay, you don't have to be ready. They'll be here for a while, I'm sure she'll understand."

When Steve said, _I'm sure she'll understand,_ it must have made sense to him. There must have been some part of Steve's thought process to which it made sense that a grown man, who had fought in every major conflict of the past seventy years, who had been through starvation, torture, and every other unpleasant thing you could think of, was afraid of being alone with a young woman. To Bucky, it was just another thing that was out of place. Why should Steve have to make excuses for him?

He became aware that Steve was looking at him. "Yeah," he said, not sure what he was agreeing with. "I'm sure I'll see her around, anyway."

He was sure he wouldn't, actually. And he was right, he didn't. He made certain of it.

+++

If he'd felt like a ghost before -- which wasn't quite true, he'd felt more like a non-entity than a ghost; a ghost implied that someone remembered you, that you had once existed, and he only felt like that with Steve around -- it was worse now. He confined himself carefully to the wings of the palace where he felt certain that none of Steve's friends would be, and trusted the disinterested Wakandan staff not to tell them. He drifted down the hall between his room and the labs, like a wraith out of Wuthering Heights, all ragged hair and dark clothing.

He didn't like the feeling that someone was looking for him. He had never liked that feeling.

It was Romanoff who found him, eventually. Out of any of them, he could have predicted that, but had somehow assumed she didn't care enough to put the effort in. But she appeared at the end of the hallway as he left the lab one afternoon, rubbing glue from electrodes off his forehead and out of his hair -- a silhouetted figure with hair like a dying sunset.

He stopped, and she stepped forward a little, into the hall light. "You don't have to say anything," she said. "I get it. But she wants to see you. She just wants to talk to you. I understand you don't feel like you can do that, but you're going to have to talk to someone besides Steve eventually, and that would be a good first step."

"Okay," said Bucky.

"Steve and I are leaving again," Romanoff said. "He left already, actually. I know he has a way of just coming and going as he feels is necessary, without any warning, but I thought you might want to know."

"Okay," Bucky said again. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," Romanoff said. She gave him a final look, appraising, up and down, and then turned to go, her boot heels clicking on the floor. "Think about what I said."

+++

They were sitting on the edge of the fountain again. The weather was on the verge of changing; purple-bellied clouds rolled around the mountains, always threatening rain that never seemed to come. Steve was back from wherever. He looked tired again -- or, more accurately, he looked weary. There was a green bruise along the side of his face and jaw, plum-colored with streaks of red where it centered on the point of his cheekbone.

They sat in silence for a while. Finally, Steve said, "I don't know how much longer I can keep doing this."

Bucky didn't say anything, but looked at Steve, tilting his head. A flash in the distance could have been lightning.

"I keep telling myself I shouldn't," Steve started. He shook his head, and then continued, "I keep telling myself I shouldn't let myself feel this way. All of them, they've -- they've done so much for me, they've sacrificed, they've stuck by me."

He exhaled slowly. "It's -- this debt, all of it. And I can't ever repay it, no matter what I do. And the worst part is that the longer I do this, the less I care. Like Captain America isn't me anymore. I guess I don't know who he is."

"What do you mean?" Bucky asked. He thought he knew, but asking seemed like the right thing to do, and he wanted to hear Steve say it.

"All I ever knew how to do was be me," Steve said. "Once, I think that was enough. But it's not anymore, and the more I keep doing -- this --the further away it gets from anything that really matters to me." His brows drew together. "You know I -- I keep coming back here, and it's the only thing I look forward to anymore, because you're the only thing I have left that's real."

"I'm not," said Bucky, before he could stop himself.

"What?" Steve asked.

Here it was, that thing he didn't know how to explain. The water. Staring upward and hoping to see proof that there was light somewhere above. "I'm not real," Bucky said. "I don't know what I am, but I'm not real anymore. I'm -- I'm nothing."

Steve's expression clouded further, the line between his eyebrows deepening. "Bucky -- I can't pretend to know what you're going through," he said. He reached over and took Bucky's hand, his fingers wrapping loosely around Bucky's palm. "But you are real. I know you're real. I know you're real, because I love you."

Bucky stared down at his hand in Steve's. His fingers hung limply. You weren't supposed to say that, he knew. Not then, and even though the times had changed, not now. You were supposed to bury it deep inside yourself, and carry it with you. And maybe it grew heavier and heavier with time. Maybe the weight of it crushed you. But that was it, that was your duty.

In a way it made perfect sense that Steve was saying it now.

"I love you," Steve said again, more quietly. His thumb traced a slow, gentle pattern across the back of Bucky's hand. Bucky's fingers twitched. He turned his hand over, and laced his fingers between Steve's.

+++

Once it started to rain, it didn't stop. It began as a persistent drizzle, and then turned after a few days to a downpour. From sunup to sundown, and through most of the night, the sound of the rain was constant. The color of the sky changed very little, a kind of pregnant purple-green-grey that matched the mountains and somewhat reflected the jungle.

People went out of their way to avoid going outside, which meant for Bucky that he was freer to wander the palace grounds than he had been before. He walked outside in the rain and let it soak him; it wasn't exactly pleasant, but nor was he in danger of catching a chill, or any real lasting effects other than wet clothes.

There was a negligible sense that he liked the rain. It wasn't that he'd _forgotten_ the sounds of rain, or anything like that, but remembering it and actually being in it were two different things. And there were oddly specific things he enjoyed about it, like the tracks the water droplets made along the glass of the windows, the smell of the damp ground.

There were people watching him. He didn't have any doubt of that. But there was nobody to look a him, or come up to him and ask him what he was doing. So he kept doing it. He walked around the gardens, sat out on the fountain, sometimes thought about Steve.

It was probably near sunset one evening; he was perched on the fountain with his pants rolled up and his feet in the water. It didn't make a lot of sense to have his feet in the fountain when the rest of him was wet from the rain anyway, but he'd had the urge and no real reason to deny it. There was a flash of movement from across the courtyard, and he looked up to see someone running toward him, holding a jacket over her head.

It was Maximoff. She hovered nervously near him for a moment, looking for all the world like a little bird with the coat flapping and her big boots and skinny legs. "Can I sit here?" she asked.

Bucky turned around and took his feet out of the fountain. "Okay," he said. "Sure."

She sat down, still holding her jacket over her head though it didn't do much to keep her from getting wet, and gave him a nervous smile. "We could go inside," Bucky said.

"No," said Maximoff, "No, it's okay, it's just water."

They sat in silence for about a minute. Maximoff draped her jacket over her head and sat picking at her fingernails and jewelry. When she realized Bucky was watching her, she looked up and smiled again, a quick flash, here and gone again. She was so young. "I heard you wanted to talk to me," Bucky said.

"Yes," said Maximoff. "I -- they had you too?"

"Hydra?" said Bucky.

"Hydra, yes," said Maximoff. "They had us -- my brother, and me. I don't remember before. My brother is -- gone now." She looked down at her hands, where she was fiercely tearing nail polish off her thumbnail.

"They had me for a long time," Bucky said. "I remember before, though."

"You knew Steve -- Captain Rogers -- before."

"Yeah, I knew Steve before. We were friends, before the serum, before all of that." Bucky shrugged. "I'm sorry about your brother."

"Me too," Maximoff said quietly. Her eyes were on Bucky again, searching. "Is it easier, remembering before?"

"I don't think so," said Bucky. "I don't have anything to compare it to, though. So I can't really say for sure."

Maximoff nodded. "I can't -- I can't give you any answers," Bucky said. "I don't have any wisdom to share, or whatever, I just -- I'm sorry, I don't think I can help you."

She blinked at him. The jacket had slipped down and her hair was getting wet. Her eyes were so blue and so guileless. "But you are," she said. "It is helping just to know there is another person, who has been through this. Who knows what they are like. How they tried to use us, as weapons, not as people."

Bucky didn't know what to say. "For a long time," she continued, "I thought that I was alone. But now I know, I am not alone." She smiled. "And neither are you."

She held a hand out to feel the rain, and then sighed, letting the coat drop around her shoulders. "I think it will be easier someday for both of us. I hope so."

"I hope so too," said Bucky.

"I am soaking," Maximoff said. "I think I will go inside. You should too -- you will get a cold."

Bucky started to say 'I can't,' but she had gotten back up and put the jacket over her head again. And anyway, he doubted she would have been able to hear him over the rain.

+++

After a couple of weeks, the weather changed again; there were brief interludes where the rain stopped, though when it did there was still the sense that it was _about_ to rain, and the clouds hung as heavy and threatening as ever. The palace gardens had gotten impossibly greener, and the mountains in the distance were covered with what seemed at a distance to be a thick coating of emerald-green velvet.

Steve had been gone again, but only for a few days. He seemed reluctant to stay away, especially now that his friends were in Wakanda. When he came to see Bucky, the silence hung between them as thick as the clouds with their threat of rain.

The thing was, Bucky knew from the past that the silence could go on forever between them. Their shared history was filled with everything that had been left unsaid, all the times it had been easier to just leave things alone— not to ask, not to have to answer. It wasn’t a void, or a chasm; it wasn’t that there was this empty space between them. It was like the wall of thorns meant to keep Sleeping Beauty locked away, or a minefield. Not empty, but full and fraught.

He would have taken the silence anyway, over all the years without Steve. But now more than ever, it seemed like a waste. Some of his patience must have worn away, or some of his fear, or both. Before everything else, he might have been satisfied to watch Steve sit there, gazing out the window with a steaming cup of coffee in front of him, his eyes reflecting first the grey of the sky and then the green of the foliage. But not now. Not anymore.

“Hey,” Bucky said.

Steve’s brow briefly unfurrowed, his middle-distance gaze focusing first on the cup of coffee — still undrunk — and then on Bucky. “Yeah,” he said, “I’m — sorry, I was just —“

He stopped abruptly, like he wasn’t quite sure what excuse he was going to make, and looked down at his fingers around the smooth dark ceramic of the mug, as elegant and simple as everything else in Wakanda. Bucky waited a minute, and then he said, “I just want to ask you something.”

“Of course.” Steve blinked, looking up at Bucky again. “Anything.”

Bucky cleared his throat. “The other day,” he began, “you said that — you said you loved me.” He paused, trying to put together what he wanted to say. “Is it — you love me, or you’re in love with me?”

For a second he thought Steve might not answer. The look on Steve’s face reminded Bucky of the day Sarah had gotten the diagnosis; frozen, slightly stricken. But Steve did open his mouth after a long few moments that dragged out as painfully as any Bucky could remember. “I don’t know,” he said. “A little of both, I guess.”

He looked away immediately after saying it, but with obvious force of will brought his gaze back to Bucky’s. And Bucky didn’t know what he’d wanted, from saying it; it didn’t feel like it was any easier, having it out in the open. At least it was there, now, instead of hidden and buried like it had been for so many years. At least it could breathe. Maybe it could even grow.

Steve’s expression started to change into something searching and desperate, and Bucky realized he hadn’t said anything back — though he didn’t know how Steve could doubt it, by now. He didn’t know what to say, either, and the best he could come up with was, “Yeah. Me too.”

For a second Steve looked shocked, and then he smiled. A little, bashful thing, a smile Bucky was pretty sure he’d only ever seen directed at Peggy Carter — or rather, not _at_ her, but _about_ her, when she wasn’t looking. “Okay,” he said.

“Okay,” said Bucky, baffled but pleased in some unnamable way. The steam had slowed from Steve’s coffee, though Steve hadn’t seemed to notice. “Your coffee’s getting cold.”

“It’s okay,” said Steve. “I don’t care.”

+++

“When do you think you’ll be ready to leave?” Steve asked, in a tone of practiced nonchalance. He had his hands in his pockets and his head down. The windows were fogged over, with lines drawn through the fog by condensation running. Maybe the funniest part was that it seemed like it should be cold outside, but it wasn’t, not at all — rather, it was oppressively hot, and so humid that your hair would start to stick to your neck and forehead after only a few minutes.

“I don’t know,” Bucky said. He tried to reach down somewhere inside and find that place where _ready to leave_ might live, but there wasn’t anything there, not even a memory of what it might feel like.

Steve looked at him. “I thought — you seem better,” he said.

“I _seem better_ ,” Bucky repeated. Steve looked taken aback, as if it was verboten to mention anything had been wrong, as though Bucky had somehow not been aware of how obvious it was. Steve had always seemed to give Bucky less credit for self-awareness than he was due, though, so that was nothing new.

Bucky kept walking along the endless corridor of windows, but paused and turned when it became apparent Steve wasn’t following him. “Buck?” said Steve, questioning, slightly pitiful.

What was there to say? He couldn’t say, _I don’t think this is the kind of thing you get better from,_ or _I don’t remember what it feels like to be better._ He couldn’t do that to Steve. And anyway, the tone of Steve’s voice suggested that he already knew, he just didn’t want to believe it.

“Don’t you _want_ to leave?” asked Steve.

Of course that would seem like a simple enough question to Steve. _Wanting_ something. Living in a world where everything wasn’t just a constant interplay of the dull fear, all the different ways you could hurt someone. Steve probably _wanted_ a lot of things — wanted Bucky to be better, wanted to get back out there, to propel himself back into a sense of purpose.

“I’ll do whatever you want,” said Bucky.

Steve sighed explosively, ran a hand through his hair. “You don’t have to!” he said. “I don’t — I just want you to do what _you_ want to do.”

Bucky stared at him for a moment, and then at the window where all the condensation tracked along in its unreadable patterns. “I don’t want to do anything,” he said, and immediately regretted saying it.

Steve just stared back. Something in his expression had gone bleak, and some fist in Bucky’s gut twisted in reaction to that look, just like it always had. And he realized that what he’d said wasn’t exactly true, because he did want something: he wanted Steve to be happy. Whatever happy meant, as impossible as it seemed. Not in a sycophantic, cloying way, but something deeper, something real. Maybe it wasn’t right, placing that kind of weight on Steve, another burden Steve could hardly bear to carry, but it was something.

“Just tell me you want me to come with you,” Bucky said. “That’s what you want, so just — ask me. Tell me you want me to come with you, and I’ll do it.”

“I want you to come with me,” Steve said immediately. He came over and put his hands on Bucky’s face, his palms slightly clammy. Up this close, those rings of green in his eyes were apparent, but that was something Bucky had always known about him anyway. “Will you come with me?”

“Yeah,” Bucky said. “Of course I will.”

+++

In the very deepest parts of the ocean, there’s no light at all. Pitch black, crushing pressure; the abyssal zone, they call it, from a Greek word that means “bottomless.” Most of this vast expanse of the earth is somewhere humans haven’t ever even been at all, just miles and miles of unexplored, unknown territory.

You would think that nothing could live down there — water so deep that the sunlight can’t even penetrate. You would think that it would be impossible to live somewhere that never receives daylight. What kind of life could that be, cold and dark? What could that possibly be worth?

But the thing is, there are fish that live there. They never see the light, and some of them don’t even have eyes to see it with, but they _live._ Their lives are so different from human lives that maybe it’s tempting not to think of them as life at all, but is that fair? Down there in the darkness, they eat and swim and reproduce, and some of them live longer than most any human can hope to, and who are we to say they don’t love, or wonder about what else is out there?

They don’t see the light, and maybe they don’t even know it exists. But they live down there anyway. They just keep living.

**Author's Note:**

> Endless thanks to [Estefania](http://marsza.tumblr.com/) for beta-reading. This fic took me a year to write; I hope you find it worthwhile. You can also find me [on tumblr.](http://dorkbait.tumblr.com)


End file.
